Thread:User talk:CodeCat/Perfective and imperfectie forms/reply (7)

What do you mean? They can still look the verbs up in Category:Serbo-Croatian verbs and Category:Serbo-Croatian imperfective verbs can't they? Why the third category?

Diminutives are different because they don't form an "equal" pair. One is the diminutive and the other is not. With imperfective and perfective forms, neither is more basic, they just occur together as an equal pair. So there is no value in knowing which one is the "imperfective form", because that has no meaning. You could just as easily call the other the perfective form.

As for alternative spellings/forms, I don't know if those categories are useful either, for the same reason. If two forms really are equal alternatives of each other, then calling one "the alternative form" and categorising it doesn't really make much sense to me either. Maybe this should be discussed separately.